Conservative group targets Hispanic voters

SACRAMENTO - A national conservative group is attempting to
recapture Hispanic voters, a growing bloc that increasingly is
drifting away from the Republican Party.

The Traditional Values Coalition, which represents 43,000 churches,
is building a conservative political network among Hispanics,
who constitute 5 percent of the U.S. electorate.

In California, they make up 15 percent of the voting public.
But fewer than one in 10 new Hispanic voters has registered Republican
in recent years.

That helped set up the GOP for crushing defeats in California
last November, when the party lost all statewide races but two.
Without a plan of action, conservatives' prospects will dim in
other states, too, said Mike Madrid, who was political director
for the state Republican Party until last year.

The report comes at a time when nearly a dozen Republican presidential
candidates are angling for support in California and other states
with heavy Hispanic populations. One of them, Texas Gov. George
W. Bush, visits the state this week and plans several appearances
targeting Hispanic audiences.

The coalition's chairman, Rev. Lou Sheldon, sees Hispanics
as crucial to advancing the group's conservative agenda in statehouses
and Washington, D.C. Many Hispanics are conservatives, he said
in an interview Monday from New York, where he was meeting with
Hispanic Christian leaders.

Some 200 Hispanic church and business leaders will meet Thursday
in the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk to develop a plan of action.

``For us to walk away from these people is sort of saying that
the Traditional Values Coalition is going to institutionalize
and become sterile,'' Sheldon said.

Madrid co-authored a report that the Anaheim, Calif.-based
Traditional Values Coalition is relying on as its blueprint for
recovering Hispanic voters. The coalition dubbed the effort ``La
Amistad,'' which means ``the friendship'' in Spanish.

The report focuses on California, a state with a large Hispanic
population that will be critical in next year's presidential and
congressional races.

But the coalition is studying it with an eye to courting Hispanic
voters nationwide, Sheldon said.

The report recommends that conservatives work to attract Hispanics
through issues, ``separating themselves from elected officials
who have been successfully demonized by Democrats.''